Lectures for students with major pedagogy (within e-learning module)
Narrative approach to art therapy: Lecture: Theoretical foundations. Exercise: Using art to externalise problem narratives and negotiate alternative and preferred stories.
Narrative approach to art therapy: experiential workshop. `Re-membering': Adapting the narrative therapy practice of definitional ceremony to include an exploration through art.
Lecture and workshop on Risk discourse in art therapy
E-learning module (as per 2 & 3):
Title: Narrative approaches to art therapy
Learning outcomes:
a) Knowledge
Understanding of theoretical foundations of narrative approaches to art therapy
Knowledge of how the therapeutic relationship is understood within narrative approaches to art therapy
Basic knowledge of the `micro-maps' of narrative therapy and how these can be used within art therapy.
b) Skills
1. Increased observational and reflective capacities
2. Students will begin to be able to apply two of the four micro-maps of narrative therapy to art therapy practice by:
Externalising and working with problems through processes of art and therapeutic conversation
Practicing narrative questions and art responses that assist art therapy participants to `re-member' the important relationships of their lives.
Experiencing the role of `outsider- witness' within an arts based reflecting team process.
Analysing the questions asked by the workshop facilitator, in terms of the landscapes of identity and action.
Social competence
The course will enhance students' interpersonal ability to work together and with clients
Course content
Lectures on theoretical foundations of narrative approaches to art therapy
Introduction to the micro-maps of narrative therapy and how these can be applied in art therapy.
Experience of externalising problems through art
Experience of participating on a definitional ceremony*.
* Assumes face to face attendance at a workshop
Assessment task and grading
100% (, 50 = Fail/ Unsatisfactory; 50-64 = Pass/ Satisfactory; 64-74 = Credit/ Good; 75-84 = Distinction/ Very Good; 85-100 = Excellent)
Part 1 (1,500 words) (40%)
Explain the philosophy and practice of a narrative approach to art therapy, with reference to at least one case example from the readings. How is this approach similar to and different from your existing understanding of art therapy? What do you see as the possible advantages, disadvantages and applications of this approach?
Part 2 (1,000 words) (30%)
As a student of art therapy, please identify and externalise an idea or habit (e.g. procrastination, lack of confidence) that could try to get in the way of you successfully completing your studies.
Write three narrative questions that you could use to explore the influence of this problem.
Write three narrative questions that would bring to light how you are already challenging the influence of this problem.
Write three narrative questions that would help you explore who and what supports you to challenge the influence of this problem in your life.
Explain why you chose these particular questions. Thinking as a narrative art therapist, how could art processes become a part of exploring these questions?
Part 3 (artwork plus artist's statement of 500 words) (30%)
Make an artwork, in any medium, that externalises the problem you identified in Part 2 and embodies / expresses your most helpful ways of responding to it, and/or who and what supports you to do this. Photograph the artwork and write a short artist's statement explaining the work. The artwork does not need to be figurative or literal.
References: Essential/ provided reading
Hoshino, J & Cameron, D. (2008). Narrative art therapy within a multicultural framework. In Kerr, C., Hoshino, J., Parashak, S. & McCarley, L. Eds. Family art therapy: foundations of theory and practice, pp. 193-219. New York: Routledge.
Linnell, S. (2004). Towards a `poethics' of therapeutic practice: extending the relationship of ethics and aesthetics in narrative therapies through a consideration of the late work of Michel Foucault. The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, 4, 42—54.
(2009). `Becoming otherwise: A story of a collaborative and narrative approach to art therapy with Indigenous kids `in care'. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art Therapy. 4:1, 15-26.
White, M. (1995) `Reflecting teamwork as definitional ceremony'. In White, M. Re-authoring lives: Interviews and essays. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications, pp. 172-198. http://www.dulwichcentre.com.au/michael-white-archive-html
Workshop notes. http://www.dulwichcentre.com.au/michael-white-archive-html
Art Therapy Short Course
A narrative approach to art therapy:' Arts of existence'
Dr Sheridan Linnell, University of Western Sydney
This short course takes its name from a suggestion, by Michel Foucault, that, rather than seeking to understand the universal truth of ourselves, we could practice both an ethics of critiquing what comes to be accepted as true, and an ongoing art of shaping our selves, our lives and relationships. In this spirit, Sheridan offers a critique of normative practices in art psychotherapy and looks to the deconstructive trajectories of narrative therapies and contemporary arts as inspiration for an alternative mode of arts-based practice. Whereas art psychotherapy puts an emphasis on intrapsychic and unconscious processes, exploring the influence of early childhood on later development through transference and the frame, narrative therapy decentres the therapeutic relationship and emphasises a social and relational view of the self. Art-making, too, is taken up differently within these approaches. However, although art psychotherapy and narrative therapy can seem like incompatible approaches, Sheridan also suggests that they have in common a potential to question the current dominance of positivist, `evidence-based' approaches to therapy. Thus this workshop will explore themes from the theory and practice of art psychotherapy and narrative therapy and provide participants with an opportunity to consider and experience the possibilities that are opened up by drawing from both of these approaches.
The course begins with an overview of the influence of poststructuralism and its implications for the practice of arts therapy. Poststructural theory has had a strong influence in the areas of contemporary art, narrative therapy and multimodal expressive therapy, but relatively little influence on art psychotherapy. Poststructuralist theories provide an understanding of the ways that relatively recent ideas of what is normal, natural and true have come to be taken for granted. Within this view, therapy is implicated in the separation of people into normal and abnormal, in the prescriptions of various ways to `fail' at normative development, and in the construction of self as autonomous and given, rather than relational and fluid. At the same time, therapy can be a place where people can engage in a deconstruction of unhelpful and pathologising `truths', and in a critical and creative exploration of alternative and preferred stories and images of their lives and relationships. As a way of grounding some of these ideas in practice, Sheridan will present a story and some images of therapeutic work, from a primarily narrative, arts-based perspective, with a young girl and her family.
A key part of this course of the course will be experiential workshops in which Sheridan will invite participants to engage in practices of `re-membering' and `definitional ceremony' - generating art-making and narratives around a theme of the people, ideas, practices, passions and commitments that sustain us as practitioners and trainees in the area of the arts therapies. Adapted by Michael White from Barbara Meyerhoff's work with a community of New York Jewish people who survived the Holocaust, `Definitional ceremony' is process of telling, re-telling and audiencing stories that can be adapted and enhanced by the arts. `Re-membering' is a metaphor and practice that foregrounds a relational sense of self and honours the connections with others that make us who we are and wish to be.
Students engaged in e-learning who are unable to attend the workshops will be provided with questions and exercises that allow them to explore the same approaches and themes, through writing and art making.
Essential reading/ provided reading (as listed above)
Hoshino, J & Cameron, D. (2008). Narrative art therapy within a multicultural framework. In Kerr, C., Hoshino, J., Parashak, S. & McCarley, L. Eds. Family art therapy: foundations of theory and practice, pp. 193-219. New York: Routledge.
Linnell, S. (2004). Towards a `poethics' of therapeutic practice: extending the relationship of ethics and aesthetics in narrative therapies through a consideration of the late work of Michel Foucault. The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, 4, 42—54.
(2009). `Becoming otherwise: A story of a collaborative and narrative approach to art therapy with Indigenous kids `in care'. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art Therapy. 4:1, 15-26.
White, M. (1995) `Reflecting teamwork as definitional ceremony'. In White, M. Re-authoring lives: Interviews and essays. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications, pp. 172-198. http://www.dulwichcentre.com.au/michael-white-archive-html
Workshop notes. http://www.dulwichcentre.com.au/michael-white-archive-html
Bibliography
Bird, J. (2004). Talk that sings: therapy in a new linguistic key. New Zealand: Edge Press.
Butler, J. (2001). `Giving an Account of Oneself', Diacritics, 31, (4), 22—40.
Burt, H. (Ed.) (2012). Art therapy and postmodernism: Creative healing through a prism. London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley.
Derrida, J. (1995). `Che cos'e la poesia?' (What is poetry?) In Elisabeth Weber (ed.). Points…Interviews, 1974—1994 (pp. 288—399). California: Stanford University Press.
Epston, D. & Roth, S. (1998). `Consulting the problem about the problematic relationship: an exercise for experiencing a relationship with an externalised problem.' In Epston, D. (1998). Catching up with David Epston: a collection of narrative practice-based papers published between 1991 & 1996 (pp. 209—226). Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications. Original work published 1996.
Foucault, M. (2000). `On the genealogy of ethics: an overview of work in progress'. In Rabinow, P. (Ed.). Essential works of Foucault 1954—1984, Volume 1, Michel Foucault: Ethics, subjectivity and truth (pp. 253—280). London: Penguin Books. Interview conducted 1983.
Freeman, J.C., Epston D. and Lobovits, D. (1997). Playful approaches to serious problems: narrative therapy with children and their families. New York: W.W. Norton.
Hoshino, J & Cameron, D. (2008). Narrative art therapy within a multicultural framework. In Kerr, C., Hoshino, J., Parashak, S. & McCarley, L. Eds. Family art therapy: foundations of theory and practice, pp. 193-219. New York: Routledge.
Knill, P., Levine, E.G., & Levine S.K. (2005). Principles and practices of expressive arts therapy: towards a therapeutic aesthetics. London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley.
Linnell, S. (2004). Towards a `poethics' of therapeutic practice: extending the relationship of ethics and aesthetics in narrative therapies through a consideration of the late work of Michel Foucault. The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, 4, 42—54.
— (2009). `Becoming otherwise: A story of a collaborative and narrative approach to art therapy with Indigenous kids `in care'. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art Therapy. 4:1, 15-26.
— (2010). Art therapy and narrative therapy: an account of practitioner research UAE: Bentham Science.
Rose, G. (2001). Visual methodologies: an introduction to the interpretation of visual materials. London: Sage.
Rose, N. (1998). Inventing ourselves: Psychology, Power and personhood. Cambridge University Press. Original work published 1996.
— (2000). `Power in therapy: Techne and ethos'. Academy for the study of psychoanalytic arts. http://www.academyanalyticarts.org/ rose2.html. Retrieved March 2003.
Speedy, J. (2005). `Using poetic documents: An exploration of poststructuralist ideas and poetic practices in narrative therapy'. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 33 (3) 283—298.
Venn, C. (2002). `Refiguring subjectivity after modernity.' In Walkerdine, V. (Ed.). Challenging subjects: critical psychology for a new millennium (pp. 51—71). Houndsmills, UK: Palgrave.
Waldegrave, C., Tamesese, K., Tuhaka, F., Campbell, W. (2003). Just therapy — a journey: a collection of papers from the Just Therapy Team, New Zealand. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications.
White, M. (1995) `Reflecting teamwork as definitional ceremony'. In White, M. Re-authoring lives: Interviews and essays. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications, pp. 172-198.
— (1997). `Narrative therapy and poststructuralism.' In Narratives of therapists' lives (pp. 220—235), Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications.
— (2000) `Reflecting teamwork as definitional ceremony revisited.' In White, M. Reflections on narrative practice. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications, pp. 59-88.
— (2007) Maps of narrative practice. New York & London: W.W. Norton.
Accessing the essential readings: Three papers have been sent in a separate email. Michael White's workshop notes and 1995 paper on definitional ceremony can be downloaded free from the Dulwich Centre website.
Powerpoint Presentations:
Art Therapy and Narrative Therapy
Art Therapy and the Discourse of Risk
(large files due to multiple images - Sheridan will bring these with her)
Equipment needs:
Art materials including collage and small 3D media, especially a variety of boxes, if possible. Computer and data projector
Biography
Dr Sheridan Linnell is Senior Lecturer in Art Therapy and Course Advisor for the Master of Art Therapy and Graduate Programs in Counselling at the University of Western Sydney, Australia, where she is also part of the Transformational Practices Research Initiative. She is a practicing poet and part of a collaborative group of artists (with Jill Westwood, Suzanne Perry and Josephine Pretorius) who are engaged in an ongoing aesthetic exploration of the links between art therapy and contemporary art. Sheridan has a particular interest in the critical and creative potential of feminist, narrative and poststructural approaches to art therapy. She has explored these possibilities in her doctoral thesis, journal publications and book. Her current research examines the relationship between risk discourse and therapeutic practice. Sheridan is the Editor of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art Therapy.
Publications (from most recent)
Linnell S (2012) Risk discourse in art therapy : revisiting Neil Springham's Inscape paper on art and risk, International Journal of Art Therapy: Inscape, vol 17, no. 1, pp 34-39.
Westwood J, Linnell S, (2011) The emergence of Australian art therapies: Colonial legacies and hybrid practices, ATOL- Art Therapy On Line, vol 1, no. 3.
Zabrodska K, Linnell S, Laws C, Davies B (2011) Bullying as intra-active process in neoliberal universities, Qualitative Inquiry, vol 17, no. 8, pp 709-719, [ORS ID: 222402]
Linnell S, 2010, Art psychotherapy and narrative therapy: An account of practitioner research. Bentham Science Publishers, UAE
Linnell S, (2009) Becoming 'Otherwise': A story of a collaborative and narrative approach to art therapy with Indigenous kids 'in care', Australina and New Zealand Journal of Art Therapy (ANZJAT), vol 4, no. 1, pp 15-26
Bansel P, Davies B, Laws C, Linnell S, (2009) Bullies, bullying and power in the contexts of schooling, British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol 30, no. 1, pp 59-69
Bansel P, Davies B, Gannon S, Linnell S, (2008) Technologies of audit at work on the writing subject:a discursive analysis, Studies in Higher Education, vol 33, no. 6, pp 673-683
Linnell S, Bansel P, Ellwood C, Gannon S. (2008) Precarious listening, Qualitative Inquiry, vol 14, no. 2, pp 285-306
Linnell S. (2007) Found wanting and becoming undone: a response to Eva Bendix Petersen's 'Passionately attached: academic subjects of desire' in Judith Butler in Conversation: Analyzing the Texts and Talk of Everyday Life, Professor Bronwyn Davies, New York & London, pp 69-85
Williams C, Linnell S, (2006) When the doctors consulted the narrative therapist: An experiment in questioning dominant stories of PhD pedagogy, International Journal for Critical Psychology, vol 18, pp 56-80
Linnell, S. (2004). Towards a `poethics' of therapeutic practice: extending the relationship of ethics and aesthetics in narrative therapies through a consideration of the late work of Michel Foucault. The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, 4, 42—54.
Linnell, S. (2001). Cutting room. New Poets Series 8. Wollongong: Five Islands Press.
Wright, J., Linnell, S. & Dale, D. (2001). `Spokeswomen': shared counselling as a context giving privilege to the power and intimacy of women's conversations.' In Working with the stories of women's lives (pp. 97—108). Collected by Dulwich Centre Publications. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications.
Denborough, D., Linnell, S. & Women and Political Action Forums. (1996). 'Talking about men's violence, talking about prisons'. In Denborough, D. (Ed.) Beyond the prison: Gathering dreams of freedom (pp 103 —110). Adelaide, South Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications.
Linnell, S. & Cora, D. (1993). Discoveries: a group resource guide for women who were
sexually abused in childhood. Sydney: Dympna House.
Exhibition & catalogue:
Linnell S, Perry S, Pretorius J, & Weswood, J. 2007, Where Knowing & Not Knowing Touch. At the Vanishing Point -Contemporary Art, Newtown, 27 September -7 October.